Outreach Funnel: Finding Influencers and Power Users

One of the perceived easiest ways to become more successful online is to reach out to influencers and power users and towards developing relationships with them. When you learn about marketing, you start to realize that your job is essentially to create the content that drives people to your basic marketing funnel so that it remains full of prospects from your target audience.

The Basic Marketing Funnel

At the widest point of the funnel, you have awareness, then interest, then desire and finally at the smallest part of the funnel you have action. This means that you have to figure out a way to get your target audience to act at each point in this funnel. One way to bring awareness is to bring in power users and influencers to help you make your case.

How Social Media Changed Everything

There are bloggers, Twitter users, Facebook users, Instagram famous, and YouTube stars that all offer faster credibility to you than if you do it all from scratch on your own. Depending on your niche, you can work to identify the influencers within your specialty. Then build relationships with them so that they choose to promote you on their own, or you pay them to promote you depending on the rules and standards within your industry.

Building Your Outreach Funnel

In your outreach funnel you need to identify the different types of influencers such as consumers (the widest part of the funnel), opinion leaders and experts, and at the top of the funnel in the smallest part are celebrities or stars who may be more difficult to reach but who will boost your business to amazing levels if you can reach out to them and get them engaged.

Devising Ways to Reach Each Level of Your Outreach Funnel

Each part of your influencer and power user funnel needs a different type of way to reach them.

Consumers – Many times business owners forget about what they have right in their back pocket already. Satisfied and happy customers can become brand ambassadors, whereas unsatisfied customers can become devastating detractors, just consider how many restaurants have bad online reviews nowadays.

Authority Leaders and Experts – Anyone within your niche who is considered knowledgeable and an expert can be considered to be in this part of your outreach funnel. When you want to boost your own reputation, it’s a good idea to reach out and build relationships with these movers and shakers.

Celebrities – With celebrities you’ll need to buy into a sponsorship and pay dollars to get them to talk about you, tweet about you or mention you in any way shape or form. They will usually do it in a way that doesn’t look like they’re being paid, but they almost always are. Be careful with sponsorships; ensure that you are clear about what you’re buying into.

How to Find Influencers and Power Users

Finding your influencers is important and can be difficult sometimes. The tools you have available to find them aren’t always easy to use or accurate.

It will take time to observe how truly good they are at influencing anyone. Don’t rely on number of views to determine the effectiveness as an influencer. The best thing to do is always assume any consumer is an influencer, and act accordingly by providing top-notch products, services and follow up. Then, keep an eye on social media to find out who your audience likes to follow and listen to. Keep track in a spreadsheet and then slowly engage with them.

Finally, determine what your motive is for reaching out to any influencer. Is it to get more visibility, credibility or make more sales? Know that before contacting them or reaching out to them so that you can frame your message appropriately.

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